


may you find your rest where no eyes may see you slumber

by gayprophets



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Death, GOD i have a lot of FEEEEEEEEEELINGS, Gen, MAG 157, friendship; kind of; in the only way gertrude knew how, gertrude pov of 157, guys i got sad jdhfsjhdf, its the corruption, pretty canon typical nastiness, this is emo sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:47:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21636094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayprophets/pseuds/gayprophets
Summary: It’s not as shocking as it could be - really, it takes much more than death to surprise Gertrude these days. Still, she has to sit in silence for a moment, processing.Adelard Dekker is dead.
Relationships: Adelard Dekker & Gertrude Robinson
Comments: 11
Kudos: 99





	may you find your rest where no eyes may see you slumber

It’s not as shocking as it could be - really, it takes much more than death to surprise Gertrude these days. Still, she has to be quiet and still for a moment, processing. 

Adelard Dekker is dead. She looks at the typo-riddled missive again, but its text is unchanging. She sits in the silence of her office with the words - _I am proud of the work we have done, and it has been an honor to do it alongside you_ \- _may you find your rest_ \- buzzing in her back teeth, bumping off the walls like flies, hazy, dizzy. She does not read it aloud, and types back - _It was an honor to know you, Adelard, rest easy_ \- too late, she knows. She’d like more, she’d like poetry, _Adelard, it was an honor to know you and here is why_ \- but he’s never going to read it, dead words in dead air reaching nothing and going nowhere. The buzzing in her mouth grows stronger, and she still does not read aloud: she won’t let the Eye have this piece of him.

She feels, briefly, like screaming, but it has been a very, very long time since she’s done anything of the sort. Gertrude isn’t sure she remembers how. A tape recorder clicks on in her desk, as though it can sense the wild urge in her throat. 

She removes it from the drawer and ejects the tape, then goes outside for a cigarette.

She can see it, although she’s not sure if it’s Seeing or simply her own synapses, misfiring as they are so often wont to do, lately. Adelard lugging a jerrycan, bright hot red, across town, the skin on the bottoms of his feet slipping, the curl of his mouth as he inhales the petrol fumes, splashing it upon himself and the bodies of those poor miserable souls he’d dragged. The skin would begin to slough off around there, she thinks, dragging his lower lip down, showing the white roots of his teeth. He’d bleed, and it would be the same red as the canister. 

Gertrude flicks her lighter a few times and wonders what he’s using: a match, slender and splintering, sparking on the rough drag against the side of the matchbox? A grill lighter he stole from a house, the long metal end hissing with gas? A plastic bic, the color garish and bright? Selfishly, she hopes it’s the zippo she gave him, worn out silver, an antiquity. It’d been her fathers, and then it’d been hers. Her father had gone over the motions with her on how to fill it, how to replace the flint, until it was muscle memory, easy as breathing. Gertrude let Adelard borrow it, and keep borrowing it. They never gave gifts. 

She hopes it’s the zippo, which is terribly macabre of her, but it’s easier to picture that old casing in Adelard's dark fingers. She hopes it gave him comfort, in those last horrible moments.

It is a terrible thing, burning alive.

Gertrude leans her back against the wall in the alleyway and breathes smoke until she Knows: he’s done it. He’s gone. The feeling in her neck and chest dies almost immediately, and she forgives herself for this lapse, this weakness. She ashes her cigarette and goes back to the Archives. There is always more work to be done, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> (trips and all these pics of gertrude robinson fall out of my pocket) oh shit oh no oh shit (tries to stuff them back in) guys dont look oh shit oh no  
> find me at themlet on tumblr to discuss sad gilf-ery


End file.
